Actors' forays in to writing are greeted with justified dubiousness by most, especially those with an established onscreen persona of pothead/loser/remedial student. Minds weren't blown here but thespian James Franco's debut collection of short stories - Palo Alto, a nod to his hometown - was far more nuanced than anticipated. "Lockheed" rather poignantly chronicles a self-labeled Science Nerd's induction into the violent, seamier side of Life via a gruesome murder at her "first high school party." The eruption of violence at a misty, wooded cabin is genuinely shocking, more so even perhaps is the author's ability to bring events in to perspective and back to earth through mid-century 16mm lunar film metaphors.
The story "Camp" more succinctly captures the vibe of Franco's collection (which owes a great debt to the insouciant cruelty of Larry Clark's juvenile film protagonists and author Dennis Cooper's doomed youth) - another first-person narrative, this time around encompassing a teen boy's wide circle of friends and their miscreant exploits. Vapid in a tone synonymous with pretension and artifice, the fractured, episode-hopping catalog of dirty deeds at a water-skiing summer camp somehow (??) left me with a very real taste of sour in my mouth. And sadness. In other words, you can judge a book by its cover (dust jacket is fiercely Minimalist, dark and stylized).
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